


Your Sins Will Find You Out

by sunflowerspaceman



Series: Sympathy for the Devil [4]
Category: Eddsworld - All Media Types
Genre: A face heel turn, Angst, Character Development, Gen, I’ll add tags w/ the chapters, Other, Tord is bad at feelings and deals with it in bad ways, Tord kills a lot of people, a slow one, but like the kind that turns heroes into villains
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-01-21 09:26:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12454410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflowerspaceman/pseuds/sunflowerspaceman
Summary: Building an army changes a man.





	1. Chapter 1

“Do you have to go?”

Tord sighed, giving Edd a forced smile.

“Yes. I do.”

“But why?”

“I have things I need to do.”

It wasn’t a lie. Not necessarily. He’d never lie to them (he never had been able to, especially not Tom). He did truly have things he had to do. They just weren’t...what Edd and Matt and Tom thought they were.

Tord shut the trunk of his car, standing there silently for a moment.

“Tord?” Matt sounded concerned.

Without much of a thought, Tord scooped his friends into a tight hug.

“Thank you. For being my friends.” He murmured, and that got Edd and Matt to hug him back, and an awkward pat on the back from Tom, because when was the last time Tord thanked anyone for anything?

If he could’ve stayed like that forever, he would’ve.

But, time was of the essence here, and he feared if he stayed any longer he might want to leave even less (and if he left now he could at least pretend he wasn’t leaving three pieces of his heart behind).

He let go.

“Goodbye, old friends.” He told them as he got in his car. There was a chorus of goodbyes (and a bitter “Good riddance” which, given the state he was leaving his and Tom’s relationship in, he supposed he deserved).

And then he was gone.

—————

It had been a month since he’d left his friends behind. It felt like a lifetime.

His plans had barely even begun, but he’d started to catch wind of whispers about him. About what he was going to do.

Tord sat on the edge of the bed in a broken down old hostel. The mechanical process of assembling and disassembling his gun was comforting.

Smooth. Simple. Nothing but him and the parts and pieces.

He heard the click of the door behind him opening. Heavy footsteps he didn’t recognize. The gun was pulled apart. No time to put it together. He stood. Turned. Grabbed the wrist swinging a knife towards his face.

There was a scuffle.

Tord got his hands on the knife.

And he swung down.

Again.

And again.

And again.

When it was over, blood stained Tord’s clothes and tears stained his cheeks. Sobs wracked his whole body. He stumbled back, letting the knife clatter to the ground.

Now, more than ever, he wanted his friends. And now, more than ever, he was painfully alone.


	2. Chapter 2

Waiting in a tree in the ass end of nowhere with a rifle clutched in his arms was not Tord’s idea of a fun time. It was moments like this that he questioned how smart his plan really was.

Snow started to fall.

All was quiet for the longest time.

Then he heard footsteps crunching. He saw his target.

The silence was broken by the rifle firing.

Tord’s ears rung. The blood staining the snow made him feel horribly ill, though he didn’t cry over the death like he had a year ago. He hopped down from his perch, gun slung over his shoulder.

The man’s name was Leviticus, Tord had been told. He’d clearly been a jovial sort of man, the laugh lines were evidence enough of that. His skin was tanned from field work. Snowflakes stuck in the dark curls of his hair and beard. His eyes were left open.

Tord leaned down to close them.

_“Oh, mor tilgi meg.”_ He whispered.

He turned on his heel and walked away into the growing snowstorm, wiping imagined blood off his hands and onto his coat.

—————

“Tord, it’s good to hear from you again!”

Tord laughed. “Edd, I call you every week.”

He could almost hear the pouting. “It’s not enough. We miss you!”

“I’m sure you do. How have you been since I spoke to you last?” Tord sat and listened to Edd tell him of what he and their friends had gotten up to, dreading the inevitable conclusion, which was—

“What about you? What have you been up to?”

Tord winced.

“Travelling. I got into a bar fight a couple days ago. Speaking of, has Tom been keeping out of trouble?” The subject change was obvious. (What would Edd think of him if he told him the truth?)

Edd fell silent for a moment.

“We’ve...been doing our best.”

The Norwegian sighed. “That’s all I can expect, I suppose.”

“OH! I almost forgot. Happy Christmas, Tord!”

It was Christmas?

“...happy Christmas, Edd. Now, I need to go. Tell the others I miss them.”

“Oh, goodbye Tord! I will!”

Tord hung up the phone and slumped back into a chair in the safehouse he’d been staying in. He’d lost track of time. This was the first time he’d spent Christmas alone—at least last year he’d had a handful of soldiers to celebrate with.

He’d killed a man on Christmas.

Without thinking much, he pulled out a bottle of wine and started to drink.

_“Mor, tilgi meg. Tilgi meg. Vær så snill å tilgi meg.”_


	3. Chapter 3

“You have been taking care of yourself, right?”

It was the first time he’d spoken to Tom in months. He got the feeling he’d been avoiding his calls.

“Yeah.”

That was a lie. Tom knew it, and so did Tord. But Tord let it slide. This call was not one that would be full of honesty from either party. He knew this.

“Been staying out of trouble?” He hoped Tom didn’t hear the pain in his voice; he had to sew up a wound on his own, as Patryck and Paul were waiting outside while he finished this call.

“For once, yeah. Are you okay?”

Dammit.

“Dandy. I got into a fight.” That wasn’t a total lie, although the kind of fight Tom was thinking of was probably not the one that had occurred. What had actually happened resulted in a very high body count.

Tom scoffed. “And you ask if I’ve been staying out of trouble. But that’s not what I meant. You sound...different.”

And of course Tom would be the one to notice that, wouldn’t he? It was a change Tord hadn’t even registered at first. But Tom knew him better than most, even if it didn’t seem that way to their friends.

Tord had begun to sound wearier than he had almost three years ago. Older.

More hollow.

“You’re imagining things, Thomas.”

“When are you coming to visit? Edd and Matt miss you.”

“Hopefully soon, if I can make the time.” He cut the thread and started taping a gauze pad over the wound. “You don’t miss me at all?”

“No.”

“Thomas, I’m hurt. What about all those fun moments we shared?”

“Jackass.”

Tord laughed, but his heart ached almost as much when he left the first time. Not because of the insult or because Tom said he hadn’t missed him, no. Because this felt familiar. Too much like it did back then, and that made what he had to do so much harder, and what he wanted to do even worse.

“I have to go.”

“You’ll call next week, right?”

“Of course.”

That was a lie. Tord knew it, and so did Tom. But Tom let it slide.

“All right. Goodbye, Tord.”

“Goodbye, Thomas.”

_(If there was an “I love you” stuck in his throat as he hung up the phone, that was his business.)_

—————

“Sir, I don’t think this is a good idea.”

Tord scoffed. “No one knows us here. We’ll be fine, Paul.”

He watched Paul scowl. “Sir—”

“Hush. We’re going out drinking. That’s final.”

Paul sighed, but had no choice but to follow Tord dutifully (along with Patryck) to the nearest bar. For his part, Tord wanted to get drunk and maybe pick up a one night stand. Anything that would make him forget his friends, forget Tom especially. At least for a little while.

He didn’t do this often. He hated to. It was too easy to forget them these days, as painful and terrifying as that was to admit.

When they arrived, Tord slammed a wad of cash on the bar. “I need the strongest drinks you can give me.” He muttered. The bartender obliged. Tord downed them as fast as they came. The alcohol burned his throat.

A couple hours later he still couldn’t forget.

So he moved onto his next plan.

He didn’t tell Paul where he was going. Just staggered over to the most attractive man he could find and started hitting on him. A few minutes later, and his back was against the wall, with his tongue in another man’s mouth. A few more minutes, and they were hurrying out the door and flagging a taxi to drive them to the nearest motel.

Tord got his wish, for a few blissful hours at least.

But his dreams weren’t kind, and he dreamt of his friends running far, far away from him, no matter what he did. And that old hole in his heart ached.


	4. Chapter 4

“Damn.”

Tord traced a finger down the fresh scar on his cheek, smoothing back hair that was fresh from the shower. He’d been hoping it would heal without leaving a mark behind. Scars always made you easier to identify. He’d already stopped wearing his hair in horns to prevent this (a decision he’d hated, but one that was necessary). He’d have to grow a beard out to hide this thing.

He let out a sigh and pushed away from the grimy mirror of the motel bathroom, glancing down at the other scars he’d gained in the past four years. Bullet wounds on his thigh and shoulder. A gash on his right side from a car crash. Some from last year that he didn’t want to think about (any remnants of his old self had died that night, died at the edge of a knife digging into his right arm.) Some from shrapnel, littered here and there across his chest and his stomach and his shoulders. Building an army was no easy task. It was a miracle he was even this intact.

Rage suddenly swelled up in his chest, and with an animalistic roar his fist made contact with the mirror. Blood poured down his fist, and tears poured down his cheeks, and his throat became raw from screaming.

After a long while, the anger subsided. Tord dragged himself off the floor and into the next room for his clothes. Luckily, the body he’d left on the bed hadn’t bled onto the floor, so save for a couple stains from cum and alcohol, they were clean.

“Thanks, Everett. You gave me exactly what I needed.” He muttered.

He scooped up the files he’d been on a mission to retrieve. In all honesty, he probably could’ve gotten his hands on them without fucking the guy. But either way the guy was going to die, so why not make his last moments fun?

Tord whistled merrily as he waltzed out of the motel to meet Paul.

——————

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Four bullets, four dead enemies. Tord’s aim was steady and unwavering. There might’ve been a pang of regret; he wouldn’t know, as he’d trained himself to ignore all emotions and focus on that perfect engine of death in his hand.

Clean. Quick. Precise.

One.

Two.

Three.

Three more dead, to the rhythm of his breathing. The smell of copper and gunpowder started to overtake him. It was almost exhilarating. He felt like he could control death itself.

One.

Two.

Three.

Reload.

Paul covered him while he reloaded, and then he was back to shooting among a group of his soldiers.

Bodies collapsed to the ground. It had been a massacre on the other side. All these people were dead, all because Tord had willed it. It made him feel a little dizzy, a little high and excited. He’d done this.

He’d done this because he _wanted to._ Because _he_ decided they’d needed to die.

He laughed quietly, sounding a little drunk.

He was going to take over the world and make it better, in his own image.

_(But how long before the making it better portion of that sentence faded?)_


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I meant to update sooner but c’est la vie

Today had been a bad day. Or maybe a bad week. Tord wasn’t really sure.

He knew, of course, as the leader of a quickly growing military power he was eventually going to get kidnapped for information and the like. And with his painfully stubborn nature, he knew he would not walk away unscathed.

But breaking his leg and stabbing him multiple times was just unnecessary. In fact, it just pissed Tord off.

Given the whispers that had started to surface about the feared Red Leader and the monstrous things he’d done in the name of his cause, they really should have expected him to escape. And take many, many soldiers with him.

He earned his title.

The remaining survivors from that day would swear to their dying days that monsters existed, and that day was proof enough.

Tord was practically blinded by rage and pain. His brain fogged over. He couldn’t hear cries for mercy, or screams, or begging sobs. Just his blood pounding in his ears.

The next thing he was fully aware of was the horrified noises coming from his second-in-commands. Then the smell of copper, and something wet and fleshy being cleaned off the side of his face. He emptied his stomach onto a mangled corpse.

_(They should’ve run faster.)_

He laughed in between his retching. Not out of enjoyment of what he’d done. Out of fear. And disgust. He couldn’t figure out what else to do. Tears were running down his face, bile was in his throat, and all he could do was laugh and lean on Patryck for support so he didn’t fall.

_(Was this all worth it?)_

——————

Tord caught sight of a face in one of the windows. The face was looking out at him now, pallid and hungry, a face that would never look on daylight or blue skies again.

It was his own face.

He laughed.

He couldn’t even recognize himself anymore. The thought of what Tom would probably say about him ghosted across his mind _(“God, commie, you look like hell, what the fuck have you been doing?”)._ Tord shook it off. He couldn’t be thinking about that. Not now. He had a job to do.

He pulled his hair back and stepped out of his quarters, making his way to where his forces were assembled, all to hear their leader speak.

And speak he did. Blood and thunder and passion and fury all mixed together into a call to arms that would make even the most jaded soldier feel like this was a cause worth fighting for. Uncontrolled gestures, a steady, booming voice, a charismatic smile with sharp, gleaming teeth—they were putty in his hands.

When he finally stepped back from the podium, chest heaving, eyes wild, the triumphant roaring of his forces filled his ears. And he was content. All the guilt and regret of the last five years vanished. This was good. This was great. This was his calling, what he was meant to do. The architect and guiding hand of a machine that was going to change the world.

He kept a straight face until he was far enough away to avoid being heard. And then he started to laugh. High and manic and giddy. He was proud. Tord was building a new age, and nothing was going to stop him. Forget painting the TOWN red, he was going to paint the WORLD red. It would be beautiful. Better.

_His._


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuu.

Tord watched Yuu fiddle with his weapon. It was clear he wasn’t too good at using it, which was strange, given how long he’d been here. After a while of watching, Tord stopped him. He couldn’t let this go on.

“Here, little one, let me show you.” His voice was low, smooth, familial. He hadn’t used a voice like that since he’d last spoken to Matt. The younger man conceded, holding out his gun. Tord moved swiftly, rearranging his hands, showing him how to aim, all calm and comforting.

“All right, Yuu. Try it now.” He took a step back and watched proudly as the blonde hit the target dead between the eyes.

The younger man was clearly doing his best not to shake as his eyes were fixed on the red liquid traveling down the target’s face and hitting the ground. Tord wrapped his arm around his shoulders, giving him a comforting squeeze. He knew it was hard.

“Excellent job, little one. Come on, let’s go tell Paul and Patryck.” He turned him away from the shooting range so he wouldn’t have to look at the target any longer than he had to. Idle but noisy chatter filled the air as soon as Tord detected the soft plop of brain matter and skin and skull hitting the ground.

Yuu seemed happy for the distraction, even as his hands shook. Tord did his best to put him at ease.

“I’m so proud of how far you’ve come, Yuu. You’ll be a fine soldier in no time.”

—————

Tord woke up to ringing in his ears and dust stinging his eyes. It felt like he was going to cough up his lungs.

He shakily dragged himself up onto his hands and knees, trying to see what was going on around him. That was a mistake. A wave of nausea and dizziness slammed into him. He almost choked on the amount of vomit coming out of his throat.

“Sir!”

There were hands pulling him up, brushing the front of his uniform off, fussing over him. He waved them off. “Where’s Yuu?” He rasped.

From what he could see, Patryck’s face fell. “...sir...don’t look behind you.”

Of course he did. He snapped around so fast he almost got whiplash, and immediately regretted it.

“Herregud…” He honest to god whimpered. Yuu was lying, unmoving under a pile of rubble, eyes wide and glassy, blood running from the corner of his mouth and from the back of his head.

Tord threw himself at the scene, desperately clawing at the debris and trying to free him, begging and pleading louder than he would if he were fully aware of himself. He couldn’t die, Yuu was his, he was supposed to protect him, he had to—

“Tord, stop.” The use of his name got his attention, as did the hand on his shoulder. “He’s gone.”

Tears started rolling down Tord’s face, and he slumped back. “But—”

“I’m sorry, Tord. But he’s dead.”

Gently, Tord moved. He cradled Yuu’s head in his lap. “We...need to get his body out of here. Deserves a proper burial.” He choked out, trying to sound calm and authoritative.

His second in commands nodded. “We will. You need to get to a medic first.”

Tord shook his head. “I’m staying with him. Bring some soldiers to dig him out and bring a medic with you.”

“Tord—”

“That’s an order, Marshals.” He hissed. Using their rank caused them to flinch and stand at attention. “Call me Tord again and there will be repercussions.”

He looked back down at the man in his lap as the duo ran off, trying not to cry as he closed Yuu’s eyes. Now was not the time to grieve. 


End file.
